#MeettheartistMonday
Meet Hera artist and President Uli Brahmst
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Albert Einstein
Artist Story
Makingwas always a way to explore the world in and around me. My mother was a bookbinder and my early childhood teacher an artist. Growing up we travelled a lot within Europe and discovering Miro, Matisse and Chagall profoundly shaped my understanding of art - a visual language full of imagination and color. The Geman Expressionists Paula Modersohn-Becker and Kaethe Kolwitz first assured me that the personal and domestic experience of a woman was a valid subject-matter. They did not glorify or beautify, they observed women and gave expression to their inner worlds and social predicaments. I studied art history in combination with psychology before I pursued my masters in art therapy. My education deepened my interest in the human experience as expressed in art. In the mid 90ies I moved for the next 12 years to NYC pursuing education in painting and mixed media at The Art Students League as well as at The School of Visual Art and subsequently started out as a professional artist in New York. The city allowed me endless access to what was made past and present and how installation and technology were reshaping all the visual arts including photography, film, design, fashion and crafts while crumbling the boundaries between them.
Influence
I have kept my work personal with the understanding that the truly personal is a gateway to the universal. My main source of inspiration is that which gets under my skin.
Take Away
I like to reach people in a space where they wonder and feel the complexity of their own human experience. Imagination can transport us from the immediate and mundane to a realm where we think more freely, operate more intuitively, and can envision ourselves and the world around us anew. Through a shift in our awareness we can make fresh choices with greater vision.
Hera
Hera I see as a local think tank dedicated to art and community. In contrast to the reality for women artists in the larger art world, at Hera the odds are not stacked against me. There is also no pressure to do and redo what sells, instead the focus is on experimentation and creative advancement. Artists at Hera are truly multigenerational which is not that common in today’s world but positively valuable to a healthy, striving creative community. I first visited Rhode Island from New York in 2007 and envisioned my daughter to grow up outside the city but was not quite resolved about living in a rural setting, when I stumbled upon Hera and thought: if that inspiring contemporary artist collaborative can exist in this environment, we can live here. This led to a life in which nature, art and feminist discourse have been intimately intertwined and continue to nourish both of us.
You can see more of Uli's work at http://ulibrahmst.com
and you can purchase Uli's work at the Hera online store:
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